ISO. LETTER TO "THE TRANSVAAL LEADER"*

[JOHANNESBURG,]
September 30, 1913

TO

THE EDITOR

THE TRANSVAAL LEADER

SIR,

I trust that you will allow me to correct the many misrepre-
sentations made by your reporter with reference to the passive
resistance movement. No doubt they are not all consciously made,
but he certainly has been the instrument through which they have
been made. "The Indian Passive resistance campaign'*, you have
reported, "is threatened with collapse/9 This statement will prove to
be untrue even if there is one passive resister earnest enough to carry
it on, and I prophesy that, so long as there is one passive resister
left to fight, the points we are now fighting for will be granted, not
because of the strength of such solitary passive resister, but because
of the invincible strength of the truth for which he may be fighting.
That our demands are just you have admitted in your leading arti-
cle, only you have asked us not to revive passive resistance, but
to be patient and to petition. Which course is the better is a
matter of opinion. I hold that the points at issue are to the com-
munity of such vital importance that passive resistance is the only
remedy, petitions having failed.

Now for facts. Your report states : "The Indian merchants
throughout the Transvaal have dissociated themselves from the
movement, and have withdrawn from Mr. Gandhi sources of revenue
without which the campaign must fail.53 The fact is that the great
mass meeting of Sunday2 was attended by almost all the Indian
merchants of Johannesburg, and telegrams in support of the ob-
jects of the meeting were received from all the principal towns of
the Transvaal, sent by the Indian merchants of those places, and

1 This is a rejoinder to an allegation in The Transvaal Leader, in a report
of die interview with Gandhiji on September 29, that a number of influential
Indian merchants were opposed to passive resistance* Similar letters were
written by L. W. Ritch and H. Kallenbach and were reproduced along with
&is in h&m Opinion, 15-10-1913.

2Scptember28